It is 'inspired' by Blueshift's post about 10 things we love and 10 we hate. This thread was started on member side some time last year, and had some nice responses, of 'get to know you' things between people. It might be fun to start it again, but over onto this side. I will just copy most the things I had in my post there, to start.

#1- The first lesson I take for skating, first time I ever been on skates, I fall I think 50 times in half hour lesson. The instructor, he ask me, well, I hope you are better dancer, because I think you are worst skater I ever seen.

#2- I want to continue with university, to get the doctor degree, but I am not sure of what I wish to put it into, literature or philosophy. But I wish to do that and still wish to be teacher.

#3- Most the time, I really am annoyed to eat. I do not eat for pleasure, and lot of time, food just make me feel more sick. I would be very happy if we could just take vitamin pills and never have to eat anything at all.

#4- I am proud that, all the times I compete at senior nationals, any partner, I always manage finishing in the top 8. And first senior nationals, I only been skating 3 years.

#5- My first job was age 12, cleaning city buses. It was some gross, when people been on there drunk and vomit. Would also wash windshield and car lights at gas station for money. Most of it only would be few rubles a day.

#6- I have been arrested, been in jail, and have been criminal, obviously, as a teenager. Was 'on street' for almost a year, and worked mostly as prostitute.

#7- My first pet I get at age 27. I never before have a pet, and my friend Leshka tell to me, well, let us try it, find you something to come home to, while you are living alone in Michigan, so you are not so lonely. We find this gerbil, after he say a friend of his have one. He say, good, it is good to start with something you can flush if it dies. It did not encourage me that it was such good idea, and I think I did not sleep first few days I have her, in case she will die. (She is still living now, and happy)

#8- I like serious authors, serious poetry and music. But I think my favorite movie is 'Legally Blonde'. Because I very much like Reese Witherspon in a bathing suit. I don't care about the rest of the movie. But she is quite the most beautiful American girl.

#9- When I was 19, 2 weeks after my birthday, my daughter was born. She lived 22 months, and was the most perfect and beautiful child ever on the earth. Because she was mine.

#10- In the ten years almost I trained in dance, I hated ballet. I like most the Latin dances for ballroom, and in ice dance, I liked best the waltz compulsories, because they was the ones with the most close 'feel' of the actual ballroom to me. But as I say, I hated ballet. I still do, to do it, watch it, listen to it.

I think most of this, it is perhaps things people who know me good, they know. But some others, it will be new to them I guess.

VN

1. I had a childhood girlfriend who gave me a green plastic donald duck ring to remember her by the last time I saw her.

2. I saw an ice storm several years ago that made the neighborhood i lived in look like something in a fantasy film...it was really trippy!

3. I hate grocery shopping, cooking, and eating...hate being bothered with it..if I didn't like sex too much to not keep my weight up, I'd probably be skelital.

4.I suffer from depression and got myself shot eight years ago in a suicide by cop attempt.

5. I cry easily.

7. I prefer to be barefoot whenever possible.

8. My favorite place to go to relax is the beach.

9. I am an artist. Not a rich or famous one, but it's what I do.

10. My favorite food is salad.

1. I love to play the guitar and sing while I play, but I don't do it often enough.

2. I like my job but don't care for my boss.

3. I like listening to the birds sing. (except first thing in the morning)

4. Spring is my favorite season of the year followed by summer.

5. I've always secretly wanted to be a Nascar driver.

6. I collected teddy bears growing up.

7. My first car was a 69 Pontiac Firebird (It could go REALLY fast!)

8. I used to love feeding the cows in the pasture next door to my home when I was a boy.

9. When I was very small we lived in the heart of California's gold rush country where it was somewhat dangerous to go exploring in the woods because of all the mines and mine shafts.

10. I went exploring anyhow sometimes!

1. i put myself through college by prostitution and selling drugs. graduated number one in my class with a BFA in advertising design.

2.I studied a semester in Florence Italy. emphasis was on Italian culture. the most moving experience i had that semester was going to germany one weekend and visiting Dauchau, the consentration camp where most of the homosexuals were kept/killed during the Nazi regime.

3. i studied ballet tap and modern from when i was 4 up until college. Ballet was my favorite. my knees can't take the strain anymore, but i still want to get back into classes.

4. i went to a boarding school 6-8th grade. before that i was raised by a nanny.

5. i've been stabbed. i had a knife on me, but i couldn't defend myself.

6. my longest hospital stay was 3 months. in isolation. for a coinfection of pneumonia and TB.

7. i went to my prom with a boy.

8. im a history buff. my house is full of antiques. my favorites are a collection of letters to one woman. she saved everything she recieved from the 1920s-1960s. all in orginal envelopes. it was an amazing find. i doubt its worth anything, but i feel a connection to her through her letters.

9. im a morning person. i wake up an hour and a half before i need to be at work so i can dilly dally around and watch the news, check my email, make breakfast before work.

10. im an avid reader. i used to stay up way past midnight reading when i was little. now i limit it to a couple chapters a night. i typically gravitate towards biographies, or memoirs but i always am willing to pick up new things.

Jarrad, I can certainly understand why that visit was a moving experience for you. I can only imagine what it would have done to myself. I think I'd have been a complete basket case. Not sure I have the courage to ever make that kind of pilgrimage but would like to try.

yeah it was pretty surreal. they had a walking tour where you had a headset and you walked to certain areas and hit a button to hear what happened at that spot. the stuff we all have been through here is nothing compared to the experiences of them. i am really grateful for the experience. the museum did a really great job paying tribute to the different types of people who were killed there. There were a number of chapels on the property now that were the different religions. and this gigantic sculpture that looks like twisted bodies with all the symbols that were used to separate them. pink triangles for the gays. yellow star for the jews. black triangle for the political detainees. i could go on and on. i would really love to get to aushwitz one day.

#1: I need to go to the dentist so bad, but I'm too terrified to even make an appointment -- even if I have extreme cavity pain.

#2: In college I had 5 majors, and couldn't finish any of them because I have such a hard time learning and/or life situations prevented me from doing them. (In order: elementary education, psychology, music, creative and technical writing, social work).

#3: I started thinning "up top" in high school and had a near bald spot by my senior year. (stress maybe, or genes, or both)

#4: I can't stomach the taste of coffee, no matter how much I try.

#5: Both my parents, and a lot of my grandparents, are recovering alcoholics -- yet I don't even like being drunk that much.

#6: The only thing keeping me in Minnesota (or the USA, even) is my sister and her family and my Minnesota friends from MS.

#7: I have two moms, and they've been together for more than 20 years.

#8: I've been addicted to sex since I was in 4th grade.

#9: My sister and nephews keep me alive and recovering.

#10: I grew up with my grandparents for the first 11 years of my life.

1. The ocean terrifies me, but I would'nt and will not let it win. So I sailed in any weather throughout early life.

2. It took me 5 years to get through high school.

3. I'd eat sushi as my only food for the rest of my life if it were economicaly feasible.

4. Mannequins in deparment stores scared the living shit out of me as a child. I still dont entirely trust them.

5. I'd chose to be in a punk band still if I could only earn enough money to survive.

6. I smuggled computer parts in europe in the 1980s

7. I had machine guns pointed at me on the East German boarder.

8. I climbed the Alps on several occasions in the summer of 1986. It was a religious experience.

9. I love the Three Stooges shows. I laugh like a loonatic at them.

10. I once had a Mohawk haircut.

1. Ever since I was 6 years old I wanted to be a go go dancer in a cage (lol)
I accomplished that "goal" when I was 32 & got $125 per nite to do so at a friends bar.
No nudity, just down to my gaunch. It was a hoot!

2. I have almost drowned twice

3. I met John Wayne when I was a deckhand on a tugboat in 1976

4. My favourite season is Autumn

5. I was "baked" at least 5 times a day almost everyday from Grade 11 until I was 21.
All my friends were dealers, so pot was everywhere all the time.
A friend of mine used to make pipes out of everything.
The best was a World War 1 gas mask that fit over your face.
You could watch the eyepieces fill up with smoke.
People at school used to call us the Squint Gang.
One time someone came running up to us saying: "Holy shit man, I could smell you guys from the 3rd floor!"
We were on the ground level.

6. I used to call radio talk shows in my teens.
One of the hosts invited me to be a guest on his show for the full hour taking questions from callers about parents & teens.

7. I have 5 tattoos & many more I would like to get

8. I thought I would be dead before I was 30

9. I was interrogated by the police in connection with the armed robbery of a diamond store when I was 19.
The whole good cop bad cop routine.
Yes I was "baked" at the time & yes I wuz paranoid.

10. My favourite movie of all time is called Kings of the Sun with Yul Brynner.
I saw this at least 10 times as a kid at Saturday afternoon matinees.
We went nuts yelling "Yay" for the good guys & "Boo" for the bad guys,
throwing our popcorn boxes like frisbees up through the projected film making shadows on the screen.
One of my best memories of childhood.
Everyone agreeing on who the bad guys were.
Great soundtrack too.

eleven. I friggin' love these kinds'o threadz

1. I like to cook my own food

2. I've never liked people touching my cutlery before i eat

3. I rarely drink anything but tea and water (or energy drinks)

4. For some reason, i would quite like to own a pair of red shoes

5. My favourite colour is red

6. I used to have about 40 cacti

7. My pets always out-live everybody elses

8. I went out with the hottest and most popular girl in my year (she asked me after she over-heard me commenting about her legs to a friend)- and i dumped her

9. I was a paper-boy for years until i got my part-time job (i was an under-age paperboy for a number of years, an older boy used to let me do it with him)

10. I would like my own castle, and my own army, and i would like to rule the world (lol?)